How to feel 10 minutes

Now go do something normal. You need to choose something within earshot of your computer (it might be a good idea to test this with the handy dandy test function before walking too far away).

For your first go at it, I suggest staying on your computer. Do something you might normally do there: check email, read some news, update Facebook, whatever.

When the 10 minutes are up, when the alarm sounds, visit the page again but don’t turn off the ruckus. Instead, just hit the snooze button and then return to whatever you were doing.

Do this for an hour or so, six rounds in other words.

If you’re like me, you’ll begin to realize that some activities suck time faster than others. In some cases, the 10 minutes will fly by. In others, it will feel like it’s running in slow motion a bit.

Overall then, this isn’t really an exercise in feeling 10 minutes. Instead, it’s really about feeling the difference between different 10 minutes.

I typically think of time as a fixed measurement, even when I know sometimes it seems to run faster than at other times. Living it out 10 minutes at a time, though, and purposely paying attention to it reveals how flexible it really is.